Assistant Professor of Philosophy Lee Cole ’04 captivated an enthusiastic audience in Lane 125 yesterday afternoon with a letter written to his freshman self.
Cole’s lecture was the most recent entry of Academic Services’ new “Letters to my Undergraduate Self” series, in which Hillsdale professors turn back the clock to relate what they wish they had known when they began college.
Professor of Psychology Collin Barnes kicked off the series on Feb. 18, and Visiting Assistant Professor of History Miles Smith IV followed suit on March 2.
Distinguished Visiting Professor of History Samuel Negus will share his thoughts at the end of March, and Assistant Professor of Physics Paul Hosmer will speak in mid-April.
The lecture series is the brainchild of senior MacKenzie McGrath, student director of Academic Services.
“My years at Hillsdale have been significantly shaped by the conversations I’ve had with my professors outside of class,” McGrath said in an email. “Their wisdom and support has been an irreplaceable part of my life here. In dreaming up this series, I wanted to pose a question that could offer to a wider audience some of the same sorts of wisdom that I have received one-on-one from my professors.”
The question McGrath posed: Knowing what you know now, what advice do you wish you had gotten before your freshman year of college?
The question was intentionally broad, and the professors who have spoken have taken it in unique directions. Cole, for example, mentioned the appropriateness of his previous relative lack of knowledge.
“If anything, I’m pretty certain that I’m actually happy that I didn’t know then all that I know now,” Cole said. “Not because I was once blissfully ignorant whereas now I’ve become world-weary and cynical, but because I simply wasn’t ready to know everything that I know now and so not knowing those things was okay, was even appropriate.”
During his lecture, Smith discussed his gradual intellectual awakening, his conversion to Christianity, and his migration from Southern student to Northern professor.
“You probably think it’s tragic at 18 finding out that you’re now single and living in small town in Michigan, sharing a house with a Lutheran dude from Riga,” Smith said to his undergraduate self.
But this trajectory wasn’t tragic at all, he said: Beginning in his junior year, he became a devout Christian.
Smith said that the experience of preparing for the lecture gave him new insights about his own past.
“I thought about things I hadn’t thought about in eight or nine years,” Smith said. “You do have this sort of reflection time that you conjure up memories of your undergraduate experience that you’d kind of forgotten about.”
McGrath said that she has been happy with the lectures so far.
“Our speakers have been gracious enough to take the time to delve into their past and present selves,” she said. “While I certainly hope that it is proving to be a valuable exercise for its own sake, my greater hope is that their doing so contributes to fostering the kind of conversation, the kind of community that helps us see ourselves and the world around us through each other’s eyes.”
